The Dalai Lama’s Secrets: CIA and the Dalai Lama

It is an open secret that America’s CIA had financed the activities of the Dalai Lama for years. We know this because America has a law that requires official government documents to be declassified after a certain period of time.

In 1998, a series of documents came to light that revealed the CIA’s involvement in the covert funding of the Dalai Lama’s political activities.  The representative of the Dalai Lama in Washington denies any knowledge of such subsidies or how the money had been spent.  However, he does acknowledge the ties between the CIA and the office of the Dalai Lama when he said, “It is an open secret. We do not deny it.”

The American intelligence cannot channel funds directly to organizations or programs that must appear national or independent, or they risk being discredited.  So, the government has to work around this by funding a series of go-between companies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This is a governmental agency that was set up by funds from the Department of State, which is responsible for foreign policy.

Therefore, the NED was formed 15 years ago to do what the CIA had been covertly doing all along. The agency established its operations in certain countries in order to influence the political developments of those countries. An example of this was in Nicaragua, where the NED swayed the February-1990 elections: they had established Civic Society as a front for their operations that led to the defeat of the ruling Sandinista party.

In Venezuela, the NED budget was quadrupled during the period that lead to the April 2002 coup against President Hugo Chavez. During the cold war, the NED was also active in many eastern European countries that had many local governments who were hostile towards Russia and favorable towards NATO or America. In China, the NED website lists three main locations for its operations, which are Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang.

Besides the NED, the organization called Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has been organizing many protests against China, especially during the last Beijing Olympics in 2008. It seems that all of RWB’s protests were specifically targeted towards the Tibet issue. Apparently, there is an unspoken connection between the American covert interest in destabilizing China and what RWB is feverishly working towards, for the same mutual goal.

Between 1959 and 1972, the Dalai Lama was personally paid $180,000 each year. The Dalai Lama had also received $1.7 million to carry out his international political activities. These funds were paid via the NED. Through the apparent works of the NED and RWB, it seems that America is anxious about the rise of China and they are funding the Dalai Lama and ‘the Tibetan cause’ as a means to weaken China or at the very least to gain a foothold in the Tibetan region of China.

At the end of the day, the funds received by the Dalai Lama probably goes towards the running expenses of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA), the governing body of the exiled Tibetans in India, but what do the funds really go to? Among many things, the CTA enforces an archaic religious ban on the Buddhist deity Dorje Shugden. This cruel ban has split the great Tibetan monasteries and exiled Tibetan community at its core, and caused much of the Tibetan community to suffer grave discrimination. There is already plenty of documented proof of this discrimination.

Dorje Shugden practitioners are denied the most basic welfare from their government in exile. They are not granted medical or financial aid, children of these practitioners are not permitted into the Tibetan schools; they are even denied access to grocery shops! Monks are expelled from their monasteries if they continue their practice of Dorje Shugden, with absolutely no financial or physical help or shelter. They are simply exiled from their already exiled community.

The Dorje Shugden ban is a serious breach of human rights and religious freedom. Like many other things in the world, the American intelligence know this but they are more concerned with the threat of China than with the internal affairs of the exiled Tibetan community. In turn, the CTA and the Dalai Lama seem content to receive these funds, but not at all for the full benefit of all their people. Rather, the funds enable them to maintain this religious ban and perpetuate the huge and growing division within their own people. So what are the funds really supporting?

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